Bestflights.com.au

1.
Posted byhmclehto(Full Member 142 posts) 9y
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Are they reliable? Please any feedback. Excellent prices, but....

2.
Posted byhmclehto(Full Member 142 posts) 9y
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please somebody, anybody

3.
Posted bywotthefiqh(Inactive 1447 posts) 9y
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Hi,One of my very best friends recommended this site to me about 18 months back but I haven't had the chance to use them yet.I'll e-mail him right now and hopefully get back to you ASAP with his opinion.

E-mail sent so hope the sludge of the ether thins out

[ Edit: Edited on Jun 10, 2008, at 3:50 AM by wotthefiqh ]

4.
Posted byaharrold45(Travel Guru 1281 posts) 9y
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I have used them in the past, but the saying you get what you pay for applies with them. You get the no frills service but anything else ie date changes, confirmation of seats etc and forget about it.

I booked a domestic flight in the US in conjunction with a rtw fare and was given the opinion that they had confirmed my flight (and had paid for the confirmed flight). I then discovered that the domestic flight which I paid for as a confirmed flight was infact only on waitlist. Lucky for me it came through OK, but if I had of been told this important fact in the first place I would not have booked and paid for that domestic flight. I also was not pre-allocated seats on some tight connection flights and despite the fact I was at the airport 3 hours early, they turned out that I had to go standby as it was on overbooked flight and other agencies had pre-booked seats for their clients. This meant I was on standby for a flight that was a once a week flight which was to connect a day later to another flight which regularly gets overbooked and is also a rare flight (to Easter Island). To get the cheaper prices it usually means taking shortcuts on service and not getting given the full advise that some people need ie you need a visa to go to Brazil on an Australian passport. I bet you that if you do a customer service servey of Best Flights, Flight Centre and STA travel a larger percentage of people would not tell you those necessary facts that you may well not know.

This sort of thing is the same sort of stuff flight centre and STA travel do as well. If you want to get the good service you have to go to a smaller agency where the prices are regularly the same or at worst slightly more. You also have to be aware of the hidden costs that they do not make you aware of up front (same procedure the other major chains use especially the quoting incorrect taxes to be able to under quote competitors). They say the price is $1500 plus taxes and then you go to a small agency and they may tell you it is $1550 plus taxes. Then when you find out the taxes Best Flights, Flight Centre and STA travel may quote you $450 taxes but the smaller independant agency would tell you the tax component is $400. This would then mean despite the fact Best Flights, Flight Centre and STA travel originally quoted you a cheaper price than others with you thinking the taxes are the same everywhere, they worked out to be the same as the smaller independant place due to illegal misquoting of taxes. This won't happen all the time, but I have found in the past that it has happened quite reguarly.

[ Edit: Edited on Jun 10, 2008, at 6:03 AM by aharrold45 ]

5.
Posted bywotthefiqh(Inactive 1447 posts) 9y
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Hi,Just got a reply from one of my best mates here in Perth.

Copy and paste --

Yes we used Bestflights for the trip to Morocco, Spain etc last year. A friend has also used them extensively. I thought they were very helpful and we had no problems with tickets etc etc.

Hope this helps.

Anthony

6.
Posted byhmclehto(Full Member 142 posts) 9y
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Thanks guys one positive and one not so positive so I guess decision is mine

7.
Posted byToniL(Budding Member 52 posts) 9y
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I think that bestflights are a reliable company in the financial sense, however I have tried top book with them a few times using info from their website only to find that there were no seats available at reasonable times. I then tried to book similar flights with www.travel.com.au another reliable operator and had no problems at all. Seats on flights that bestflights could not obtain were available through travel.com.au

I wouldn't want to run down either company but would suggest that anybody contemplating a booking should check with both companies, preferably by phone, to ensure that schedules, seats etc. are what you are after.

Flight Centre in Australia claim that they will undercut any genuine quote, usually by about $20. Then you can go back to bestflights and get a further cut. The trouble with this procedure is that it takes time and trouble for a few dollars on an international fare - not worth it in my book. I just wish Flight Centre would quote their best fare in the first place.